What’s Academic Portoflio?
What’s Academic Portoflio?
The AP, so to speak, extends the scope of the TP to all activities, i.e., not only teaching, but also research, administration, and social contribution.
In addition to describing each of these activities independently, the “Integration” section discusses the contributions of each, and also identifies the core of what it means to be a faculty member.
Typical paper-based Aeaching Portfolios are approximately 14-20 pages long with supporting materials attached to the main text.
Purpose
The Aeaching Portfolio serves two primary purposes: improvement of activities and visualization of performance.
While TP focuses on teaching for the above purposes, AP extends its scope to encompass all activities.
As university faculty members are also researchers and have roles in administration and social contribution, the significance of developing APs is great in that they can address these issues in an integrated manner.
Structure
The Academic Portfolio will consist of the following items.
・Introduction
・Education
・Philosophy (why are you doing them?)
・Responsibility
・Strategies and Methodologies (how are you doing them)
・Outcomes/Evaluation (how did you do them)
・Improvement/effort
・Goals (what you want to achieve in the future)
・Research
・Philosophy, Significance, Purposes
・Research
・Research funding obtained
・Knowledge, Techniques and Skills
・Goals
・Service
・Typical examples of administrative work
・Typical examples of social contribution
・Integration
・Mutual contribution of activities
・Key achievements to date
・Core of university teaching
・Objectives
・Conclusion
As a table of contents, you are free to set it up as you see fit for your activities, and you can also add items other than these, such as improvements you have made or matters related to your research.
How to Develop
We work in the order of teaching, research, service and integration, with the teaching part being similar to the TP. For each activity, the philosophy is not considered out of the blue, but rather the specific day-to-day activities are used to delve into the important ideas, the philosophy so to speak, behind these activities.
As with the TP, it is possible to develop your AP on your own, but for deeper reflection and easier development it is recommended that you attend a short intensive workshop and have a mentor (a support person) with you as you develop your AP. For more information, see the explanation of APs in the Development section.
There is also an SAP chart (Structured Academic Portfolio Chart) to make a reflection like a TP chart.
How to use
The AP you crea can be utilised in basically the same way as a TP. In particular, an overview of your activities as a university teacher can be useful when you want to think about the future of your career, or when summarising what you want to say at a job or promotion interview.
Update
For improvement, it is advisable to review your short-term targets around every year at the earliest.
Another good time to update them is before and after changes in the environment, such as the start of a new curricurum or project.
Furthermore, before and after promotions and transfers are also good times to update your goals in order to define your own current and future path.
Updating is not easy to do on your own. You may wish to use an update workshop.
References
・Peter Seldin and J. Ellizabeth Miller (2008) The Academic Portfolio: A Practical Guide to Documenting Teaching, Research, and Service, Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education
・Kayoko Kurita(2010) Academic Portfolio (National Institution for Academic degrees and University Evaluation (Eds.) “Establishing a culture of university evaluation”) pp78-84 (In Japanese)
・Yoshida, L., & Kurita, K. (2016) Evaluation of Structured Academic Portfolio Chart and Workshop for Reflection on Academic Work, Procedia Computer Science, 96, 1454-1462 (DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.08.191)